Page 51 of A Lady of Means
“Maybe you’ve been wanted, but not by men.”His throat bobbed as he looked down at her, shaking his head.“Only so-called men who saw you as a pretty, dutiful lady… a bauble.Men who don’t admire your honesty or your wit.”
She felt the callous of a fingertip as he pushed a strand of hair from her face.She closed her eyes against the sharp wave of longing that sprang forth with his caress, his body so indelibly close.She willed him to continue, to continue talking or to continue touching her; but shewanted.Her mind and her body wanted so much more of him.All of him that there was to receive and totake.She wrapped an arm about his nape, her fingers exploring the downy tendrils of dark hair and spurring him to speak.
“Such men would run at the first sign of your having opinions or use you and push you away.Those “men” couldn’t find their spine if they were kicked in it,” His voice, low and guttural and possessive, did things to her that she felt in her core.“Those men, they aren’t me.”
Hell no, they weren’t.
She hadn’t thought a man like Devyn real until she’d found him.She didn’t intend to let him go.
But that wasn’t what she said.
“What would a man like you do with a woman like me?”
Could he read all of the insinuations in her eyes, roaming over the width of his shoulders and down the rest of his body everywhere her hands wanted to?
He smiled, the effect beautifully sinful on those lips of his.“Guess you’ll have to marry me to find out.”
She rested a hand against one of his sharp cheekbones, the warmth and stubble of his skin radiating through the gloves she wore.
“I think you should know that if you wanted me, you and your misplaced sense of honor don’t have to propose matrimony…because you wouldn’t be…ruining me…Devyn.”
He reached for her again, pulling her closer to him, eyes intent and dark.“Christ, woman.Are you listening?It doesn’t matter what or who is in your past, I want you to be my future.”
She didn’t let him finish.She couldn’t wait to hear the rest of his words, she’d heard enough.
Her lips searched his, taking them both in their possession all at once.The press of his tongue into hers had her pressing more of her into his grasp.One hand slipped beneath his jacket, hitching up his shirt to better access the smooth expanse of his abdomen.The warmth and tautness of his skin ratched the pace of her heart.She felt him suck in a breath, chasing it back into her own mouth.
Moria wasn’t good at declarations.She wasn’t good at baring her soul.This?This she could do.Displays of affection that both shared what was on her heart through her greedy hands and sated her lust all at once.
* * *
It wasDevyn who pulled back.
“That’s not an answer, Moria.”
Why did she do this?
Just when he shared himself with her, she distracted him with lustful hands and lips thinking he wouldn’t notice she didn’t match his sentiments.He knew she felt the same.He’d witnessed enough of her mollifying and terrifying the weak men who didn’t deserve her to know he’d have been cast aside long before if she didn’t want him back.
“Wasn’t it?”she said, her voice a sultry brush against his mouth.
He pulled back to look down into the blue-gold foundries of her eyes.There was a lusty haze there, but he saw the love too.It made him brave.
“Not for me.”
“You want to hear me say it?”
With a calloused finger, he tipped up her chin.“I want to hear you say it.”
He watched her throat bob and her eyes lock onto his.“Very well,” she lifted her head proud like a queen, “but you didn’t get on your knees to ask the question.”
This woman.
“Woman, I’ve been on my knees for you since that willow tree and you know it.”
He didn’t know what he was expecting, another heated rejoinder or witty setback, her usual avoidance maybe; but it wasn’t tears.The watery laugh through tear-studded eyes sounded so much like joy it almost sent him to his knees.He’d made that smile crack through her surfaces, he’d made her eyes glint like that, and he’d made that sound come out of her that he instantly wished he could bottle, not just for his own ears, but for hers, so she could hear it later.It was something solid, something real, something he could say he gave to her.
Moria was crying, he hated that he was making her cry, even as he removed her glove to place the ring on her finger.He didn’t wait for her answer, he took her hand and placed a kiss on her palm.She held up the ring to study it in a stray beam of moonlight.
